Who are the Vendragon?

So self-assured, she was, only hours earlier. So brave and self-confident. So virtuous and independent at the right moments, yet obviously weak during others.

She suddenly found herself pressing her hands to the sides of her head—she’d never done something like this in front of her brother—almost sick with discomfort. She saw the expression on the boy’s face, then her own, only in her mind’s eye, weak, scared, unprotected, and she realized once more that they were just small children, incapable of much, and just how alone they really were.

ORPHAN’S PREY

by

Lawrence Dagstine

A rather large, muscular, adobe-colored lizard was awakened that same night by what sounded like distant explosions. From behind the controls of his land scout, the startled iguana with the reddish-brown leather armor and twaddle-speaking tongue realized it was thunder reverberating among the low cumulus that was some hundreds of miles wide. There was the pitter-patter of rain pellets on the vehicle’s front looking glass and hood. A break in the drought? No, couldn’t be; Ragnarok should only be so lucky this time of year. All the water in the universe couldn’t fix that recurrent problem, only toss it a band-aid. Hence the greenhouses, pipelines, and special sprinkler system back at the city. Fog clouds approaching? Maybe. It was a more logical bet. In sandy, mountainous regions like this, a heavy thunderstorm or methane-mixed hail shower could be an isolated occurrence or a signal that a new front was moving in—or yet another unwanted season. Whichever it was, the lizard was glad he was snug inside his tracker rather than camped out in a dry marsh or deep desert valley where the storm was picking up speed and strength. As for how bad conditions would get, he’d just have to wait and see.

“Fog billows?” asked a similar life form from a standard operating panel in the rear. Unlike the front of the vehicle, there were no visual systems or radar maps or even a looking glass to peer out of. Compared to his much taller partner, this reptile’s armor was grayish steel, the portions of scaly flesh that was visible a mustard tone.

The tongue-tied lizard at the wheel of the land scout looked at his weather gauge. “With precipitation like this”—when he talked his mouth didn’t always move but, rather, an electronic chest unit with a flashing orb flickered—“what else could it be?”

“The way you study natural features,” his friend remarked, “I would have thought something more exciting. Whatever your definition of exciting is. You know, Koral, I’m quite surprised you never applied for an Earth visa. You show a certain kind of enthusiasm for your work.”

Their vernacular wasn’t perfect, the interpretive English and back and forth chitchat a bit skidded; but the chest units helped immensely with vocabulary and pronunciation.

“Funny, Bakkra,” he laughed. “I don’t know whether to pat you on the gills for your clever perceptions of me—because I am mostly used to your cynicism—or just go ahead and collect my winnings now. Heh! And here I thought only the man-droid was able to understand me.” There was a brief pause. “Speaking of which, the synthetic one has not returned or communicated back with our lovely package.”

“He’s a robot. Robots are late, too, you know.”

“Not this robot. I was the one the manufacturers hunted down and finally sold to. I was the one guiding him through the wastes.”

“You seem concerned, and tired. Should we call off the search?”

“No. Not yet.”

“They’re that important to you, huh?”

“Yes. That important.” Koral leaned back in his metal chair and let the ravaging elements unfold before him, while keeping a close eye on the overhead gauges and monitor for something else.

Lightning flashed some more. The alignment of the bolts, shooting outward from the cumulus in all directions, reminded the lizard of the storm chasing he undertook in his youth; after three hundred and sixty years, one begins to feel old but still take pleasure in the eccentricities of the past.

Thunderstorms in the wastelands of Ragnarok were forever awesome displays of limitless power, he thought, sometimes releasing energy many times greater than the atomic explosion range. Hailstorms derived of methane were a whole other story. Still, he knew if you were close to either one, or became trapped in the very center of a fog cloud, there was about them a personal quality. It was dramatic and inescapable. It was terrifying but vivid, as if every sudden flash, every strong gust of wind, and every simultaneous explosion that crackled and boomed were seeking you out; after all, it really sought no one else. The lightning came in multitudes and blinded you. The thunder wreaked havoc on your ears and deafened you. The ice-cold rains came down heavily and drowned you. And on the open plains, the sand-filled wastes, and in hanging valleys of crystal and rock, there was no place to take refuge.

The snow, which frequently becomes spot blizzards with reckless currents of air beyond gale force, could also be merciless and astonishing in its ferocity. Large, lazy flakes drifting down at first, touching the ground and melting instantly. But in minutes the fall becomes thicker, more rigid, and the wind-whipped mess pummels the landscape. The temperature drops rapidly. Marshes and gullies turn in the twinkling of an eye to great streams of half-frozen mud, which then later break apart from those very same winds and become torrents, rushing steeply downhill unintended, catching up loose rocks, Yurga bush, even boulders. Other times, the mud is uplifted and snatched from their channels, as if by some godly hand. Then it is flung into the air with impending force, thus turning it into hail during its whirl around the cloud formations and falling with a shrapnel effect down upon lower elevations of land. In the midst of the mud particles, an unscented methane composite, laid bare to Ragnarok’s wrath and planetary nature to do whatever mixing and mashing it likes. Once it falls back down again, hardened and in hail form, it wreaks of the most terrible odor, which can be inhaled up to hundreds of miles away.

Koral always remembered the cloud masses beginning somewhere in the high mountains, never the desert regions or marshlands, and in an almost tentative fashion. Always the highest escarpments, always the greatest plateaus. Perhaps that was what made the seasonal irregularities so peculiar, so unrelenting in their expansive devastation. And you never expected a season to change so fast or, unintentionally, drive through one. Not unless it was closely monitored or regarded from a distance.

From within the land scout, and up along a high altitude, the now-dozing lizard found such an effect magical. A swirling, shifting pattern of light, eventually graying, then dulling and, finally, obscuring. Precipitation from some disturbance in the planet’s magnetic field eventually conjured up the surrounding fog—yes, that had to be it—but he couldn’t be certain. Neither could his people. It was just another mystery of the planet, passed down from generation to generation, and his hypothesis was open to much conjecture. Sometimes there was a break; usually there wasn’t. Sometimes it revealed uncharted peaks, gorges and canyons, and the Vendragon Township far below, often untouched by the gathering clouds and coming storm.

At times he found such atmospheric wonder indescribable. He often used worlds populated by humans as a comparison: where Earth’s seasons changed over the course of months, the cycles on Ragnarok could change within minutes if not mere seconds. He used these comparisons in his teachings. The Vendragon, whose society already flourished in ways early human colonies had, achieved much knowledge and experience from it. They took it with them wherever they went; though formally a tribal race, that and available technology became a handed down tradition.

Finally the lizard’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice on the overhead speaker. “Hey, storm chaser! Come in, chaser! What are you chasing after now? Over.”

“Affirmative,” he answered. “Unpredictable weather surrounding just about everything. All within close proximity of the vehicle, at least, otherwise cloud-to-ground. Too soon to tell. Just beginning. Over.”

“I’m sure the young ones are all right,” the speaker crooned; the voice on the other side tried to be reassuring.

“What makes you think I was worried about that? Over.”

“Have any of our friends made an appearance?” An intense silence followed.

Bakkra was about to say something smart when Koral turned and shushed him. “The man-droid has still not reported back, and no,” he said. “No activity or other signs of life in the region. Over.”

“Oh, well, still armor yourself. This storm system reading is immense from our side. We’re going to catch it for good and for sure, and there’s an airstream behind it. First snow and ice, then rain and wind, heavy at times. Even at your elevation.”

“Trust me. We’ve already felt the thunder.”

“Thunder is nothing.” The communicator cut off for what seemed like two, maybe three seconds, followed by unusual static. “We may lose… you if… you go any… higher,” the voice continued brokenly. “You been feeling tremors? Over.”

“Negative.” Koral flipped a few switches on the overhead panel and fixed the glitch. “Unless there’s something I don’t already know or you’re not telling me. Over.”

“Hmm, well, we’re still sending two extra rovers your way. Over.”

“Helpful, Ooglad, but Bakkra and I are all right. Over.”

“Listen, Koral, I know it’s just a random search, and this cloud build-up is like all the other occasions, but let’s be honest here, you can use all the help you can get.” A brief pause, and then: “Small stuff, under four on the quake register, with sand-shocks set well outside your perimeter. But why turn down a free assist? Over.”

“Thanks, Ooglad, but no thanks. Out.” Koral switched off the communicator.

Bakkra was the one with the smug look now. “What did you do that for? You’d have to be mad to turn down a rescue and assist in conditions like this.”

“We don’t need it. We’ll just stay the night. The storm will pass, like those before it.”

“For all you know those children might already be dead! Your droid’s bleeper would have picked them up kilometers ago. This, my friend, is just suicide!”

“Really, Bakkra? How so?” Koral leaned back in his seat once more. “Does this also mean I’m forcing you to commit suicide with me? Because I do occasionally entertain the thought.”

“I guarantee you these children are already worm food or some other kind of beast droppings!”

“I say you’re wrong.” The lizard was terribly amused. “For once in your pathetic existence, don’t be such a coward. Part of our race’s survival depends on these two kids. We’ve weathered fog clouds before, and knowing how Ooglad thinks, he’ll most likely still send out that extra patrol regardless of what I say. He’s crazy and neurotic, too.”

“You’re right,” Bakkra said. “For once you are very right. That young reptile is paranoid and foolish like you. But I am not.” Gathering his things, he went on, “I don’t plan on staying here with you. So, if you will not wait for the assist and accept it, then I will. They’ll give me a ride back to the city, while you stay out in the hail to wither and die.”

He was prepared to slide open the door and exit the vehicle when Koral jumped up and stopped him. “Oh no, my friend. You are not leaving this tracker.” The lizard made his presence felt; the air suddenly became hostile and serious. “Not while I am in charge. I say we weather the storm, investigate these hills and cliffs, and that is final!”

“Let go of the door, Koral. Things could get messy in a very confined space.”

Lightning flashed just outside; the crackling sound was ear-piercing. Koral shook it off. Then he released his massive-sized hand from the door’s grip. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’d ask you to be reasonable but I think you and I both know we are beyond that now.”

The mustard-toned reptile reconsidered. “The only reason you are being this way is because of what happened to Arim. You’re scared you’ll have to live through a repeat.” There was a brief silence, significant, and followed by what seemed like an even more emotional reawakening. “Your puny brain might not realize it, because it’s crammed deep inside your subconscious—yes, one of your human terms—waiting for the chance to be exposed, waiting for the opportunity to be expressed, and aired in permanent relief.” Then Bakkra put his things down and took two steps back. “There is a cause to your neuroses, Koral. I see this. Ooglad sees this. The whole tribe sees this! They worry about you. They can see right through your armor, the pain you are suffering, the empty feelings you sometimes emit. You leave the camps and city grounds to study the conditions out here, bury yourself in your research. This is your means of escape. But because Arim perished and you suffer does not mean others need suffer as well.”

Koral did not reply. Instead, he returned to the front of the vehicle, strapped himself back into his metal chair, and peered silently out of the looking glass.

Bakkra went on, “I will not go. I will return to my station. This is a very strong storm formation we are dealing with here. Hopefully, your instincts are right this time. I also pray you will not be blinded by pride again. This stubbornness needs to subside.”

Koral blocked the rest of what he had to say out and stared up at the overhead panels in dismay. Eventually he closed his eyes and, with the ease of long practice in strange places, went immediately off to dozing again. In a few hours he would see what effects of the storm he could find, and if the children or the man-droid had left a trail for him. This time he was prepared. He had a carry-along machine, lightweight with a strap, which detected alien life forms.

He continued to ignore Bakkra’s petty banter through the night. He continued to be aware of feeling kinship with the environment and, oddly enough, with the fog clouds. It was a feeling he found impossible to shake. Pensively he looked back at the fateful actions that led up to the Arim tragedy. It was so long ago, uneventful to say the least. How could the thoughts still persist? Were they really bottled up inside of him? It was his first interspecies “coop”, as most out-colony settlers called it in those days. The boy was too young. Sixteen in Earth years. For every hour the lizard was out there searching for the two orphans he probably thought of Arim and the accident that befell him twice as much, only unconsciously.

For a reptile such emotions were not like him; then again, perhaps he did not try hard enough to show emotion. Along with his predictions in the weather, and for as long as he could remember, he had experienced premonitions instead. If the premonition seemed genuine, his chest unit would emit a strange glow, and he would utter a warning of disaster to the rest of the tribe. Very rarely did the Vendragon take him seriously, and very rarely did they act on it. His forebodings were never specific, the calamity either absurd or nameless, so it was unusual that he did not speak of any premonition in the days or hours before Arim—a most treasured farmhand assisting their nascent culture in advancing agriculturally—was attacked and fell from that high cliff. And never in his wildest dreams, he thought, could he predict that, even now, the two orphans he searched endlessly for might bring with them a terrible but ancient disaster.

“Vendragons live in the grassier regions—probably further north. They rely on our knowledge of agriculture. Supposedly, they thrive off it.”

“Yeah, but couldn’t we still head in that direction? I mean, somethin’ made that smoke.”

“Oh, Blake! It’s much too far. We should wait for a scouting vessel.” She started to undo the knots inher hair. “Go back to sleep. I’ll take first watch. Besides, the distance of these plains are farther than you think. And who knows what manner of beast created those rings. For all we know it might be the same kind of creature that attacked us, burning carcasses and picking on flesh.”

The boy wentscared and silent.

She hoped she spoke with conviction, but afterwhat they’d been through, it disturbed her to know that her brother’s thoughts had beenrunning so close tohers.

They settled down by the fire, and before long their breathing grew slower and deeper. After a while, Chelsea couldn’t stay up any longer. Eyelids falling, she reached for her brother’s swollen hand. Normally he’d have snatched it away, but he didn’t now. A veil of mist drifted over the moons that scattered the night sky, and the children slept…

Orphan’s Prey – Part Two

by Lawrence R. Dagstine

Chelsea woke in the twin lights of dawn and reached for her brother. He wasn’t there. She quickly looked around her, then scrambled to her feet. “Blake? Blake! Where are you?” For a terrifying moment she thought he had set off by himself had gone on about those smoke rings and the Vendragon for a good hour. But then she saw him, a dozen or so yards from where the fire had been, staring out across the desert. In the faint light, with his red vest and tan khakis, he looked taller and older.

Displeased, Chelsea clenched her hands into fists and plodded over. “Blake Prittengayle! What are you doing?”

He didn’t move but kept staring ahead as if in a trance. “Looks like some abominable wasteland, don’t it,” he said, without looking up at her.

“Abominable?” Chelsea vested a short laugh. “I can’t believe you know what that word means. Come on.” She led him back to the campsite. He moved like a tiny sleepwalker, then he started to shiver. She lowered him to the ground and cradled his head in her lap, just as their mother used to. After a while his shivering stopped.

“Chandler told me what that word meant,” he muttered under his tongue.

“Did he now?”

“Uh-huh. Also, the air smells funny. The weather’s gonna change seasons again soon. The air is salty, like there’s somethin’ big on the way. Chandler called it pre-cip… pre-cipi…”

“Precipitation?”

“Yeah, that’s it!”

“Blake, what were you thinking of running off like that?”

He slowly got to his feet. “I don’t wanna live on Ragnarok. We don’t belong here!” His eyes were serious, then he faced the distant mountains. He remembered the out-colony stories he had heard at the sanctuary from those who were older, those who had gone walkabout with their siblings or cousins on foreign worlds, only to take part in alien ceremonies or have relatives sacrificed in accordance to them. One boy, eleven, who he shared bunks with, had returned to the freighter after four months of living on nothing but insects. A salvage team had found him naked, soiled from head to toe and huddled up in the corner of some old cave in the side of a cliff. He came back without his twin brother or his two older sisters. There was no trace of the adopting species, no documentation. The only thing the boy had to remember them by was a photographic imprint locked into a small handcrafted identification bracelet.

“I don’t wanna end up like Louie,” he finally said.

“Louie?” Chelsea was silent for a moment. “Oh, yeah… Louie Peder. The other kids used to make fun of him. They used to call him Stinky, because he never bathed or washed. But after he came back from that extrasolar rock, after his sisters and brother went missing, he just wasn’t right again. He stopped talking. Kids stopped making fun of him. They stopped bothering with him altogether.”

“Hey, let’s go south! Back to the transmat station, where the Keeper let us down. Plus the air’s not as salty there.”

“But the freighter is no longer above the planet,” Chelsea tried to explain.

“So, maybe it’ll come back when it finds out what happened to us. The Keeper has rescued stranded kids before.”

“Blake, there is no way I am going back through those crystalline wastes. And there is no way I am going to risk both our lives going back near those giant stones in the bluffs. That’s where we first spotted those monsters.”

“Ahh, Chelsea, please!” The boy practically begged. “We have plenty of daylight to guide us, and lots of rest!”

“And what about your hand? Last I looked your knuckles were almost flattened, all black and blue.”

The boy held his hand up for her to see. “Look! All better. I don’t even need a bandage.”

She had known it was coming, especially since the talk the night before about the smoke rings and the northern part of the planet. “That terminus could be anywhere from a couple of hundred miles to a whole thousand behind us. We never kept track. We were inside the vehicle the whole time. It took almost three days to get where we are now, and using a durable transport.” A brief pause. “I know you’re not that stupid. There’s no point in even checking our rations. We’d surely die of hunger and thirst.”

“No nutrient packs or water?” the boy sulked.

“No nutrient packs, I’m afraid. And not really enough water, to be honest.”

“We could die of hunger and thirst the other way, too, sis. Or we could get the rover’s touchpad working again. Least while it’s still sunny.”

“Idiot! You mean the navigational router? Not even the best mechanic in the Cat’s Eye could get that infernal taxi and its low-tech components to run again. Don’t you remember what that thing did to it?”

There was a moment of significant silence as the memory flashed back.

The girl braided and unbraided her hair. She was intelligent—so was the boy when he wanted to be, eager and far beyond his years—but her life as an orphan had done nothing to qualify her to make this sort of decision. So why would Blake be any different? Deep down she was scared like him, only less easily at times to show it. All she knew in this strange world was that she had to protect her brother, no matter what the cost. “Okay, suppose,” she said slowly, “we stay here one more night, find some kind of cave or shelter in the vicinity of these hills. After all, I think I noticed some cliffsides. We have plenty of flares. We can find some use from all this Yurga brush. Give your hand another day to heal, maybe collect some herbs or plantlife and make weapons out of the crystals. If a scouting vessel doesn’t come by tomorrow morning, then we might as well head back to the transmat. Hope that the Keeper or Koral are there waiting for us.”

Blake nodded. “Fine.”

But no rescue came. They spent another night in the bluffs, sitting beside the fire again, waiting and hoping. They examined the flora they had collected, separated what could be used as food or an ingredient and what could not. Wrist encyclopedias helped them achieve this function. As handy as the schooling devices were, there was only so much memory it could hold and only so much knowledge it could provide. That whole day picking, and straight into the night, Chelsea was frightened the monsters would come back—out of all worries, that remained her constant—while Blake complained that the air got chillier at times and smelled saltier. Whenever she looked down at her wrist, she tried to pull up info about the planet and its meteorological phases, its orbit, and other asymmetries. Nothing. No factual data relating to the worlds in the surrounding nebula. Not even an out-of-place singularity in which she could barter for a clue. Whenever she tried to be smarter than the device, punch in a successful tag or keyword, she got nothing. There was absolutely zilch on the tornado creatures—she had figured as much—and nothing even remotely resourceful on the Vendragon. With its miniature data core, it was pretty much only good for geological referencing: rocks, minerals, botany. Blake’s was slightly bigger but malfunctioning because he wore his on the hand that got injured.

In the early morning hours of their fourth day, toting extra satchels of herbs and shrubbery, they set out to walk to the south. The now longed-for terminus of their dreaming which lay beyond a ridiculous amount of horizons, and an expanse of miles they could not possibly fathom, they walked. They carried with them spears which they had carved and built by hand: part jagged-edged crystal, part disposable laser cutter. But even with the lighted, armor-piercing weapons, from all paths the odds were still too overwhelming. They were not stacked in their favor this day just like the rest; it was a merciful thing they didn’t realize that they had about as much chance of getting to their destination as a soldier ant crossing the cold, terra-formed wastes of New Sedna.

In the late afternoon they arrived back at the scene of the incident, only along a much higher tract of land; the rover was just over some dry sandy hillocks. Had they been mindlessly walking in circles? Regardless, Chelsea stood on her tippy toes to look over the rocks. The moment she saw the monoliths her anxiety level rose again. Blake began to set aside a couple of water canisters, some wireless provisions, and the weapons they had put together the night before. Then they approached the edge of the nearest ridge and peeked down. They lay quietly on their stomachs and just watched. There were no signs of life, but Chelsea still remarked in a low voice, “We shouldn’t be backtracking let alone stopping here. Not even briefly. Those things live here. I just know it.”

“Oh, come on, sis,” Blake said. “You knew we had to come back this way, and I still think we should go down there and disconnect that touchpad, otherwise look for some kind of communicator.”

“Again, what good will an inoperable router do us?”

“If we get it working it’ll lead us in the right direction. Duh!”

“Is it worth sacrificing your life for? Oh, you can be so stubborn at times, little one. Scared one minute yet outwardly brave the next. No, bro, as your older sister this is where I put my foot down.” She grabbed his wrist with force and, as he pulled away, she fell backwards in the dirt. His encyclopedia unit detached easily and was now in her hand. “Blake, get back here this instant!” He started running downward along the dust and crystal-lined ridge, handmade spear in tow. The pulverized vehicle was less than a quarter-mile away. “Blake, please, don’t!” Hesitant to raise her voice any louder, she hurried after him.

Back at the wreckage, the boy stood quietly facing the rover. A single tear fell from his eye; moments later more followed. Chelsea finally caught up with him; so did the terrible memories of days past. Together they turned their attention to the upended vehicle, the broken glass, and the headless driver, whose lanky frame was still sticking a few feet out. Much of his synthetic tubing was shriveled up, the plastics and operating fluids dried out from prolonged exposure to the heat. The girl wrinkled her nose, while continuously stealing glances over her shoulder. Unlike before, the monoliths now interested her. She wondered what had caused such tall and magnificent bricks to melt from within.

“He ought to be buried,” Blake said.

“Chandler was a machine.”

“Doesn’t matter. He was still encoded with feelings. That makes him just as human as us—and he was my friend!” The boy wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “He deserves a funeral. Even in a place like this.”

“Yes, but how?” The body was too heavy to carry back up the trail, and the ground at the site of the accident happened to be hard. “Listen, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll make a pulley out of what’s left of the truck’s door. Seems durable enough.” She looked up at the sky. “The suns are currently with us. It’s that or nothing, kiddo.”

Blake gave a nod of approval. Then he went to the vehicle to retrieve the touchpad and scavenge for items his sister might have otherwise overlooked or considered worthless. Afterwards he had to admit reluctantly that she was right: the corpse was heavy. Panting and straining, they heaved Chandler’s remains onto the top of the blue-tinted door. In the end, they raised the zyranium stretcher along a ramp and atop a high flat-surfaced boulder. So flat it resembled a slab in midair. Once it was clear of the ground, Chelsea crossed her fingers and hoped that the strange alien creatures who walked by wind and shadow wouldn’t mistreat the rest of the body.

The girl approached the boulder, leaned up against it, stood on the balls of her feet and raised the spear in her left hand. The laser cutter at the tip of the weapon worked in conjunction with the lime crystals and ignited Chandler’s dismembered form. Then she returned to her brother’s side, and together they watched the flames. A few minutes later she climbed into the back of the rover again and checked the power cells. The solar reserves were exhausted. Looking up, however, she noticed a small bulb on one of the contorted operating panels. A distress beacon—the silent kind. It was glowing green. Perhaps Chandler knew the moment they were attacked to throw it on. Perhaps help was already on the way. She parted a smile.

Perhaps there was hope yet.

Outside the boy was packing the router all snug in his satchel. He deposited its energy cubes in his vest pocket. Hopefully it could be fixed. Hopefully he’d be the one to mend it, and, if so, put it to good use later on in their travels. Then he stared back up at the burning body. He remembered Chandler’s singsong kindness: the ancient stories of wonder and the furtive bites of jerky and candy that caused intoxicating laughter. What he did next was partly instinctive, reminiscent of his days aboard the Juniper. He began to pray and hymn; it was the special prayer which, according to keepers and lonely orphans, would exorcise a new home or planet of its evil spirits and bad elements. Just like the one that caused Chandler’s death.

The girl came back and watched her brother. She felt torn in two; as if half of her was standing dry-eyed beside a spread-open coffin intoning an Earth requiem, while the other half was dancing around gaily and celebrating life.

The boy’s harmonious devotion ebbed and flowed between the smooth cadences of what the Keeper had taught him of religion. When they were residents of the Juniper, the children had a much simpler name for it. They called it Faith Class.

Chelsea patted her brother on the shoulder and, giving him as much time alone as he needed, went to inspect the monoliths. She raised her arm to the first and largest of the great green stones and punched a few buttons on her wrist encyclopedia. When Blake had finished, he’d gotten off his knees and caught up with her. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she replied without looking back. Her tone was matter-of-fact.

“Looks like somethin’ to me,” the boy said nosily.

“Just surveying, really.” Chelsea remained unconcerned, but her intuition would have told another story. “See this? According to my cyclopedia this is some form of granite with an igneous outer layer but an internal heating source.” She held her wrist out for her brother to see; Blake shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve never seen anything like it in text cards or disks.”

“You mean like volcanoes?”

“Kind of, I suppose. Also, these blocks have their own magnetic fields—small, mind you; practically dwarf-sized—but given their geological shape over time they probably act as nothing more than a wind receptor or miniature power conductor.” When she leaned in closer the key drive containing her life essence flipped out of her shirt and clung to the great stone. “See what I mean?”

“Whoa!” The boy was taken aback; he, too, felt the rope around his neck being tugged and pulled. “You think they have somethin’ to do with this planet’s crazy weather system?”

“Maybe. Magnetic properties are very common among these types of stones: Earth, Mars, Ganymede, Titan, Upsilon, Epsilon, Centauri, Andromeda—they’re all over. Scientists and colonies from across the stars have proclaimed they even have the ability to metaphysically heal the sick.” The girl was confident she was on to something. “But all the suns and moons in the Cat’s Eye,” she went on, “all the heat generated in Ragnarok’s core couldn’t cause melting of this magnitude. I just know it. No, this was a very different kind of combustion. Or at least something along those lines. A very powerful force from within, and that force absorbed the special properties these stones give off and used it to burst free.”

“So somethin’ livedinside this big rock, huh?” Blake looked up at the tall stone and rapped the side of it. He counted twenty more within a few yards of where he was standing.

“Or slept,” Chelsea said. “If you want my opinion, they might even be some kind of age-old resting chamber or husk.”

“The Vendragon?”

“Nah, couldn’t be.”

“Bigger?” The boy’s eyes widened. “Worse?”

“Yes.” Chelsea went back to her wrist and ran another analysis. “And very much alive.”

After she finished scrounging around for more data, she shut the device off and flipped the top panel shut. She stepped back from the monolith and observed it some more. For a moment it reminded her of an extraterrestrial Stonehenge, an ancient Earth supposedly known for its magnetic and metaphysical properties. Then she pretended it was a giant sandstone coffin; the eerie comparison caused a sudden shiver to run up her spine. She soon realized that anything else than what she’d discovered so far was just a mystery or worthless knowledge.

Blake was already halfway up the trail. “Come on, sis! We’ve got a lot of walking ahead of us.”

Chelsea eventually caught up. “Oh, here,” she said, going into her knapsack and tossing something his way.

“What’s this?” Blake had never seen anything like it; the interior was paper.

“When I went back I found it in Chandler’s overhead compartment,” she said. “I know how close you were to him. Thought you might want it. It’s a book.”

“What’s a book?”

“It’s an antiquity. The contents are paper. They don’t make paper anymore. Not for centuries.”

“What’s an antiquity?”

“Old objects of worth, numbskull.” Chelsea rolled her eyes and laughed. “Books were the things used for entertainment or learning purposes long before touchpads and wrist encyclopedias became necessary. They were meant for the imagination.”

Blake thumbed through the pages. “It has words in it.”

“So do wrist encyclopedias.”

The front cover read:Lord of the Flies

The boy grinned. “Thanks. I’ll treasure it with my life.”

He led the way south into the dry wastes and ridges of sand, crystal, and sprinkled garnet. He didn’t look back, but the girl glanced more than once over her shoulder at the rover and flat-surfaced boulder in the glare of the two suns. In the hours before the double sunset they covered perhaps twenty miles. Chelsea was happy with it. So long as they were far away from the site of the wreckage by the time the primary sun disappeared over the horizon. That’s all that mattered to her.

They found a good place to camp among a cluster of Yurga stalks which rose like pallid ghosts around a depression. There, in this quiet place, other washed out trees and herbs were strewn about. They laid out their provisions, pre-programmed a half-dozen flares and made a giant circle of flames as their fire, then each ate jerky and wuava fruit. With twilight came the stars—millions of them, literally dotting every section of the colored sky. Compared to the bluffs, the wastes were beautiful by moonlight—fourteen moons, upon first count—and the children were settling down contentedly in the warmth of the glowing embers. Here and there the boy went into his satchel and fiddled with the router. But it was obvious he could not get the touchpad working, no matter how hard he tried. The girl, on the other hand, sat thinking about the Juniper, and how she too missed the voices of the kids now. She could hardly believe how far they journeyed. She could hardly believe they were going into their fifth day on this enormous planet.

With the flames crackling in all directions, the children heard a metallic clatter in the distance and saw a light inching across the skyline. It was some time before they realized that it was a rover coming up through the wastes.

They also shared the most unusual feeling that they were being watched.

The girl’s voice was uncertain. “If we ran quickly, do you think we’d catch it?”

The boy said nothing at first, strangely sniffing the air. Very carefully he kicked sand and ash over the fires, extinguishing every single glimmer of flame that surrounded them. His behavior was very weird. After a time the light moved on in the direction of the bluffs. Then, finally, he nodded to his sister. “Koral?”

Chelsea, hardly seeable, shrugged her shoulders. “Can’t be sure.” There was a moment of silence as they stared past each other in the darkness. “It’s late,” she whispered. “I really don’t want to take any chances if we don’t have to. Go ahead. Make another fire.”

The boy smelled the air again, then ran up the rocky ridge behind him. “Salty,” he said. “I knew it. Look!” Not one, but two immense fog clouds were moving across the desert fast. Almost like airborne sandstorms. “Bad weather’s on the way, sis. Pretty low-cast, too.”

“Smells like methane if you ask me,” Chelsea remarked curiously. After a while, the stench had become so unbearable she had to pinch her nostrils.

“It’s in the snow that travels over the endless sands,” Blake pointed out, “and the snow falls within the fog. Never outside it. Chandler told me all about it. It’s an atmospheric phe-nom…phe-nom-e…”

“Phenomenon?”

“Yeah, that’s the word!”

“You make that sound as if it’s a good thing.”

“No, it really isn’t.” The boy looked to the plains and darkened horizon. “We need to take cover fast, sis. Real fast.” His voice was full of worry.

With the helpful glare of one or more moons, Chelsea could notice the same in his eyes. “What if there isn’t enough time? What if we can’t find a cave or some rocks quick enough?” She panicked.

So self-assured, she was, only hours earlier. So brave and self-confident. So virtuous and independent at the right moments, yet obviously weak during others.

She suddenly found herself pressing her hands to the sides of her head—she’d never done something like this in front of her brother—almost sick with discomfort. She saw the expression on the boy’s face, then her own, only in her mind’s eye, weak, scared, unprotected, and she realized once more that they were just small children, incapable of much, and just how alone they really were.

*

A rather large, muscular, adobe-colored lizard was awakened that same night by what sounded like distant explosions. From behind the controls of his land scout, the startled iguana with the reddish-brown leather armor and twaddle-speaking tongue realized it was thunder reverberating among the low cumulus that was some hundreds of miles wide. There was the pitter-patter of rain pellets on the vehicle’s front looking glass and hood. A break in the drought? Nah, couldn’t be; Ragnarok should only be so lucky this time of year. All the water in the universe couldn’t fix that recurrent problem, only toss it a band-aid. Hence the greenhouses, pipelines, and special sprinkler system back at the city. Fog clouds approaching? Maybe. It was a more logical bet. In sandy, mountainous regions like this, a heavy thunderstorm or methane-mixed hail shower could be an isolated occurrence or a signal that a new front was moving in—or yet another unwanted season. Whichever it was, the lizard was glad he was snug inside his tracker rather than camped out in a dry marsh or deep desert valley where the storm was picking up speed and strength. As for how bad conditions would get, he’d just have to wait and see.

I’ll be coming for a second time to what, over the last year or so, has become a very popular and free webzine for writers of poetry, inspirational stories, Christian Fiction, Experimental Fiction, Some Science Fiction and Fantasy, Christian Science Fiction, and more or less stories that are uplifting. NO horror. Rob Crandall’s: Einstein’s Pocket Watch. This would be my 2nd upcoming appearance to the webzine, but with a mainstream/literary piece this time. I was in the first issue, and I’ll be back again September 2010. It’s a wonderful blog webzine. Check it out.

My 7th and 8th acceptances to the long-running print mag, NOVA Science Fiction, will be coming your way next year between Issues #25 and #26. However, now that NOVA is going into its eleventh year and looking to thicken its pages and increase their circulation(s), I might have two stories in one issue again. Previous issues would be No. #24. Yes, I’m in it. Stay tuned in 2010 for a Dr. Who convention with NOVA SF in the dealer’s area (and a lot of famous Brits), and a time traveling story of mine within their pages.

I’m pleased to announce that the 24th issue of NOVA SF is now available. Ten years publishing! This would mark my fifth appearance with the Hard SF and Christian SF publication. I’ll have another story with them sometime in late spring 2010. According to the recent Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, the circulation has gone up a little. Let’s see if we can increase that again this year. You can also subscribe via Paypal. Published semi-annually, NOVA SF is edited by Wesley Kawato. It also appears he’ll have a dealer’s table at a very famous Doctor Who Convention in Los Angeles, CA in February. GALLIFREY 2010/Gallifrey One:http://www.gallifreyone.com/

It’s the Biggest Dr. Who Convention in the United States and NOVA SF will be there!